'No one is building a new Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis against the US,' said Director of the French Institute for Foreign Policy Terry de Monbrial at the international conference 'Russia and the new world order' which is taking place at the Baltchug Kempinsky hotel in Moscow today. He said that 'the question is only about what kind of world we are living in. 'We would like the world to be multi-polar, but for the time being it is oriented only on the US which has the military capacity to surpass all remaining countries,' he said. He said that the main idea of world order for the US is based on the philosophy of preventive activity, while at the same time the 'French did not fight against the US or for Saddam, we only upheld the principles of the future.' He also said that perhaps multi-lateral international institutes worked poorly on several questions; however, what would happen if we destroyed them? He called on the UN to work out a criteria of threats, which could be taken as the foundation if the US will insist on the conception of preventive activity. 'If the US wants to change the rules, we must agree on what foundation this will be done otherwise 'threats in a uni-polar world are very dangerous,' he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, former Finnish President Marti Akhtisaari and a number of international specialists are taking part in the conference. Moreover, prominent Russian politicians, scientists, businesspeople and journalists are also participating.

At the same time an enlarged session of the editorial, tutorial and scientific consulting council of the Russia in Global Politics journal is also taking place at the Baltchug Kempinsky hotel in Moscow. Besides discussions, at the conference there will be reports on the theme 'G8 - rebirth of leadership' which were prepared by groups of leading world specialists for the G8 summit in Evian on June 3, 2003.

More than 5.8 million people voted for Nicholas Maduro at the presidential election in Venezuela. This is more than a quarter of registered voters. Why did those people vote for the man, who, as Western media write, took Venezuela to the brink of collapse?